Looking for opinions on sending feedback to a vet
Hello,
Just looking for a little advice here on whether or not I should send a little note back to the local emergency vet. I will try to keep the posting to the basics but some medication detail is required to explain why I'm thinking of writing. The short story is that I took my dog to the emergency vet, told them about her preexisting condition and they ran every test but the right one to figure out her problem. Now in order to hopefully save another dog going through this I am thinking that I should write the vet and tell them what they missed. I don't want to be that mean person who makes the vet sad, but Penny likely would've died if I had just left them to do their thing.
Penny has addison's disease and she was behaving as if she were going into "crisis" again so I whisked her off to the emerge vet. I called ahead to say I was bringing in an addision's dog who was in crisis, I brought her medications, and when I got there I explained that her medications had changed recently as her regular vet had said to try weaning her off the prednisone and it had ended within the last week.
There are three types of addison's, the vet ran the electrolyte test that often only shows one of them. She came back and said it was not addison's that was the problem and said it could be early arthritis, a nerve thing, or a muscular skeletal thing. She started talking about xrays but basically said there was nothing wrong with my 3 year old dog aside from her inability/unwillingness to get up. I was sure it was addison's, asked about putting her back on the prednisone and the vet seemed ok with that but then started talking about doing a full blood panel. Since the blood panel didn't involve knocking out my already messed up dog I agreed to that over the xray but it still showed nothing.
I asked again about getting her back on the prednisone and the vet said sure, then asked if I wanted to leave her with them for observation. I declined because if she couldn't see anything wrong with Penny then I was not leaving her in their care. I paid the bill and left with Penny & our prednisone.
We got home, I popped a prednisone in her mouth and set her up in the kitchen and spent the day camped out beside her and reading more about addison's disease online. I confirmed my suspicions that the vet had not run the correct test. It took the prednisone a few hours to kick in, but by the evening Penny was 100% back to normal.
So would it be rude of me to inform the vet of what they missed? I don't want to burn bridges with the only emergency vet in town but they should at least know which tests to run. The true test, the ACTH test for diagnosing addison's, was never offered. One of the addison's sites I found summed up her problem perfectly, I just wish the vet had known about it.
Secondary adrenocorticism usually only affects the glucocorticoids, and is believed to occur most often when prednisone or other cortisone being administered for medical reasons are suddenly withdrawn...In some cases, especially secondary, no changes in electrolyte balance can be detected.
Oh, and for any one curious about the cost. For everything that was done I paid just under $500. $15 of that was for the prednisone that was what actually saved her life.
Here is a picture of her, there is sun in her eyes, poor girl :(
Just looking for a little advice here on whether or not I should send a little note back to the local emergency vet. I will try to keep the posting to the basics but some medication detail is required to explain why I'm thinking of writing. The short story is that I took my dog to the emergency vet, told them about her preexisting condition and they ran every test but the right one to figure out her problem. Now in order to hopefully save another dog going through this I am thinking that I should write the vet and tell them what they missed. I don't want to be that mean person who makes the vet sad, but Penny likely would've died if I had just left them to do their thing.
Penny has addison's disease and she was behaving as if she were going into "crisis" again so I whisked her off to the emerge vet. I called ahead to say I was bringing in an addision's dog who was in crisis, I brought her medications, and when I got there I explained that her medications had changed recently as her regular vet had said to try weaning her off the prednisone and it had ended within the last week.
There are three types of addison's, the vet ran the electrolyte test that often only shows one of them. She came back and said it was not addison's that was the problem and said it could be early arthritis, a nerve thing, or a muscular skeletal thing. She started talking about xrays but basically said there was nothing wrong with my 3 year old dog aside from her inability/unwillingness to get up. I was sure it was addison's, asked about putting her back on the prednisone and the vet seemed ok with that but then started talking about doing a full blood panel. Since the blood panel didn't involve knocking out my already messed up dog I agreed to that over the xray but it still showed nothing.
I asked again about getting her back on the prednisone and the vet said sure, then asked if I wanted to leave her with them for observation. I declined because if she couldn't see anything wrong with Penny then I was not leaving her in their care. I paid the bill and left with Penny & our prednisone.
We got home, I popped a prednisone in her mouth and set her up in the kitchen and spent the day camped out beside her and reading more about addison's disease online. I confirmed my suspicions that the vet had not run the correct test. It took the prednisone a few hours to kick in, but by the evening Penny was 100% back to normal.
So would it be rude of me to inform the vet of what they missed? I don't want to burn bridges with the only emergency vet in town but they should at least know which tests to run. The true test, the ACTH test for diagnosing addison's, was never offered. One of the addison's sites I found summed up her problem perfectly, I just wish the vet had known about it.
Secondary adrenocorticism usually only affects the glucocorticoids, and is believed to occur most often when prednisone or other cortisone being administered for medical reasons are suddenly withdrawn...In some cases, especially secondary, no changes in electrolyte balance can be detected.
Oh, and for any one curious about the cost. For everything that was done I paid just under $500. $15 of that was for the prednisone that was what actually saved her life.
Here is a picture of her, there is sun in her eyes, poor girl :(
